"A gentler scion to the wildest stock,"
and thus mend Nature. She would prefer to be "Flora peering in April's front," along meadows which Proserpine might have roved through, far from the university and the din of scholarships. And pray restrain Ophelia from the commission of suicide by joining a nunnery; but do not save her life to put her to a trade that turns upon any other knack than simple beauty. A woman who can enthrall a Hamlet will esteem it no derogation to pluck from his memory a rooted sorrow. It is a profession quite as sanative as Helena's, whose father had taught her the use of curious drugs, and bequeathed to her "prescriptions of rare and prov'd effects." But let Ophelia be simply beautiful, be surprising like the first May-flowers, be winning like unobtrusive violets; let her exhale, like slopes that are brown with needles of the pine. Preserve the maid who held Hamlet's princely heart in the hollow of a moist and rosy hand: let her survive among us to hold others, to unwrinkle brows of speculation with a finger-tip, to unknot the snarls of business and ferocious care with kisses which the street will not overhear. Out of all her craze may she gather up again and redistribute the flowers of her shy disposition, "for remembrance; pray you, love, remember;" and some for herself too, "we may call it herb of grace o' Sundays."
Do not tempt Ophelia to drown herself again
"With annoyance of charity schools or of districts."
Turn over all such business to that pragmatic and correct Isabella: she will do better in it than in making a whole nunnery miserable with posted notices of the dangers to virtue and of rules for being severely let alone. But Ophelia,
"Live, be lovely, forget them, be beautiful even to proudness,
Even for their poor sakes whose happiness is to behold you;
Live, be uncaring, be joyous, be sumptuous; only be lovely,—
Sumptuous, not for display, and joyous, not for enjoyment;
Not for enjoyment, truly; for Beauty and God's great glory.
Built by that only law, that Use be suggester of Beauty,
Nought be concealed that is done, but all things done to adornment,
Meanest utilities seized as occasions to grace and embellish."
LOVE IN SHAKSPEARE.
The great motives and impulses of human nature do not find themselves made obsolete by Shakspeare's genius: we meet the central passion of Love animating every play, and modified by the various characteristics of his women. They appear in the plots, as in the world, to discharge that great function of their being. Steele once said of a woman, "To have loved her was a liberal education,"—a happy phrase which has done duty since in other connections. There must have been floating in Steele's mind the verses of Biron in "Love's Labor Lost;" at least, the pith of his sentence is there anticipated:—
"For when would you, my lord, or you, or you,
Have found the ground of study's excellence,
Without the beauty of a woman's face?
From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
They are the ground, the books, the Academes,
From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire.
For where is any author in the world
Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye?"
"Without love I can fancy no gentleman," says Thackeray.